About Ò̩kọ Language

This website is about Ò̩kọ, the language of the Ogori and Magongo people of Kogi – a state in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria, West Africa. Ò̩kọ is a small group language, which is increasingly becoming endangered due to various socio-political reasons. The site is a product as well as a process of an ongoing research to explore, document and to preserve the rich cultural heritage of Ò̩kọ and the speakers.

Ò̩kọ is a language spoken by about 40,000[1] people in Ogori and Magongo Local Government Area of Kogi State, in a middle belt region of Nigeria, West Africa. It is a tone language of the West Benue group under the Niger Congo phylum with three basic tones high (‘), low (`) and medium or neutral tones. Ò̩kọ language is mainly spoken in two communities; namely Ogori (also referred to by the locals as Ò̩kọ) and Magongo (referred to by the indigenes as Osayin). The two varieties have slight differences in accent, most probably motivated by their interaction with their closest neighbours. The names used to refer to the language and the communities are interchangeable among the speakers. The language of these communities will henceforth be referred to as Ò̩kọ in this website.

Ogori-Magongo community shares boundaries in the south and south-west with over a dozen Okpameri dialects of the Edoid[2] language clusters in Edo State of Nigeria. The Ebiras are in the immediate north of Ò̩kọ speakers’ home. In spite of the numerous linguistic groups surrounding them (numbering over 22), Ò̩kọ speakers manifest linguistic as well as cultural particularities among her neighbours.

The Ò̩kọ Language Website is a product as well as a process of an ongoing research to explore, document and to preserve the rich cultural heritage of Ò̩kọ and the speakers. The project, which began over 30 years ago, is fundamentally a scholastic research on the language, including a PhD (2006) study in Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Objectives

The website presents multipurpose and multimodal resources for understanding Ọ̀kọ́ as a language, its speakers and their community; and provides various information of epistemological interest. The information in this site includes facts about:

• Ò̩kọ as a language
• different aspects of the culture and tradition of Ò̩kọ speakers,
• online information of interest to linguists and language analysts
• educational resources for oracy, literacy and numeracy in Ò̩kọ
• references to some other literature on Ò̩kọ and its speakers.

When fully developed, it will also contain a bilingual lexicography, aspects of the grammar, an archive of Ò̩kọ texts as well as of other resources.

Up till date, Ò̩kọ only exists in the spoken form. It is not a written language, although there has been a growing interest in its writing recently.

Therefore the website will not only be of great interest to the general public or anyone who wishes to learn something about the Ogori-Magongo people and their rich heritage, it will also serve a significant purpose to Ogori and Magongo people who wish to be literate (learn to read and write) in their language.

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[1] City Population  http://www.citypopulation.de/php/nigeria-admin.php?adm2id=NGA023015 (viewed 2/3/15)

[2] The term Edoid is used to refer to languages that have genetic relation with Edo language, spoken in Benin, Edo State of Nigeria.